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By Giri Nathan
Photography by David Bartholow
[vc_empty_space height="15px"]Spooky feeling alert: Did I detect, on Thursday evening, some part of myself rooting against Carlos Alcaraz? That can’t be right. Already? He’s barely two haircuts into his pro career. He conducts himself with humility and a goofy smile. He won’t turn 20 until May. And yet watching him on Thursday evening he felt already like a monolithic and inevitable presence, the kind that you can picture holding the trophy before the tournament begins, the kind that squeezes the optimism out of the generation above him and the one below. This is all a compliment, in its way. The actual tennis is as eye-popping as ever. But for the first time I caught myself issuing a sigh. Already? There’s gonna be two more decades of this![vc_empty_space height="10px"]